An interesting trend I see: most early stage startups I see don’t have a UI/UX designer on their team. It’s not that long ago when a minimum product team was considered a PM + UX + 2 eng (frontend and backend)..
Who is their designer? Pinterest and Lovable.
Usually the founders take a bunch of screenshots of reference apps and sites and store them in Pinterest boards. Then they push those screenshots to Lovable and ask it to generate designs based on those screenshots.
Will this mean the end of designer as a job? No. For consumer AI, taste and UX are one of the biggest moats, and these are squarely designer’s work.
Instead, designers will have to evolve. The role is shifting from executor to tastemaker and growth leader.
The real value now:
- Coming up with the right ideas
- Building delightful interfaces that Just Work
- Identifying the correct reference apps and sites and knowing how to differentiate
Design isn’t dying, it’s just becoming more strategic – the designers who understand this will thrive.